The year 1998 still towers over the landscape of French football as a glorious milestone. Who, after all, can forget how RC Lens shocked a nation by clinching their one and only Ligue 1 title… and also that other thing with Les Bleus and Brazil? But whereas Zinédine Zidane and Co cruised down the Champs-Élysées in an open-top bus for their World Cup victory parade, the domestic champions had to settle for a more ramshackle mode of transport – if you can call what is essentially a massive metal bin “a mode of transport”. Skips don’t usually tend to carry passengers, but this one carted a squad-load, the players leaning over the sides as they were towed through Lens by a tractor, and none other than the club’s president at the wheel.
“The madness” is how club legend Éric Sikora refers to Lens’s Ligue 1 title celebrations. It’s an apt phrase for that entire period, when a team representing a region in steep economic decline somehow conquered France, before going on to post a famous Champions League victory at Wembley. Les Sang et Or (the Blood and Gold) are back in the European elite this season, a quarter of a century after their sole French crown, and their return has stirred up memories in the small but passionate football hotbed, where Sikora’s name and those of his team-mates touched more hearts in 1998 than the likes of Didier Deschamps and Marcel Desailly.
“The fans’ support is massive,” says Vladimír Šmicer, another hero of that title-winning team. “People in Lens love football and love the club. There is not much else to do, really. It’s a small town of about 35,000. And the stadium has a capacity of nearly 40,000. But there’s a large urban area around the town and a lot of people come to see the matches. The players feel a responsibility to make them happy and win for them.”
That was especially true in the 1990s as the closure of the last remaining pits devastated the former coalmining stronghold. An estimated 200,000 jobs were lost in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region over the final two decades of the century, and that put Les Sang et Or in the tricky position of defending the bruised honour of a struggling community. Too bad, then, that the club had never won a major title since being founded in 1906. And nor did that look poised to change at the start of the 1997/98 season, with Lens having barely staved off demotion to Ligue 2 a few months before.
“We almost got relegated the previous season so we didn’t know where we were going,” says Sikora, a local lad and childhood Lens fan who made a record 590 appearances for the club. As for Šmicer, he had come from further afield, the Czech international joining from Slavia Praha in 1996, but he too remembers the team’s toils in his debut campaign, before Roger Lemerre steered them to safety after replacing Slavoljub Muslin. “We didn’t play very well in that first season. Everyone was disappointed.”
The mood at the Stade Félix-Bollaert scarcely improved when Lemerre then left to work with France coach Aimé Jacquet. In an astute piece of internal recruitment, however, Lemerre’s assistant Daniel Leclercq was promoted to the hot seat – the club’s fourth coach in little over a year. A former Lens stalwart now remembered fondly as ‘the Druid’, Leclercq quickly set about transforming the team’s playing philosophy, from defensive diehards into an ersatz northern Barcelona.
“In his head, he had an idea,” recalls Sikora. “It was to leave his mark on the spirit of RC Lens.” Adding playmaker Stéphane Ziani and centre-forward Anto Drobnjak to a squad that had largely operated together for several years, the demanding new boss drilled his side into a free-flowing attacking unit – both at home and away. “Wherever we go, Lens will play to win” was his credo, a remarkable mindset for a man whose only previous experience as head coach had come in a brief spell at Valenciennes a decade before.
Leclercq’s ambition outstripped that of even his own club president, Gervais Martel, who assembled the ranks before the start of the season and told them qualification for the UEFA Cup would be a success. “Now, that’s a speech I cannot agree with,” Leclercq is reputed to have said once Martel had left the room. “I have faith in my squad. Me, I want to win the league.
“Daniel had high expectations,” explains Sikora, who has held the Lens coaching reins twice himself – among various roles in 43 years of loyal service since joining as a youth player in 1980. “At one point in the second half of the season, he came into the changing room and asked us, one by one, if we were going to be champions. He was certain we could do it, and I think something changed in our heads at that moment. We told ourselves we were able to go for it.”
Midway through the campaign, Lens lay fifth in the standings, albeit having posted some eye-catching wins. Newcomer Drobnjak had struck a hat-trick in a 3-2 August victory at Marseille and the Montenegrin forward repeated the feat in an even more spectacular 5-4 home defeat of Cannes in November, the visitors having rallied from 4-0 down before fellow summer signing Ziani buried a late penalty. Crucially, Leclercq’s side never let surprise leaders Metz race too far clear – and they reeled them in down the final stretch thanks to ten wins from their last 12 fixtures.
None was more significant than their trip to face the pacesetters on 29 March 1998. Take all three points and Lens would go top with a mere four matches left. “It’s true that both Metz and us had great teams,” remembers Šmicer. “Metz had Robert Pirès, Rigobert Song and several experienced players. So, they had a great spell and so did we, whereas Paris, Marseille and Monaco were all having issues.” Playing on the right wing of a settled 4-3-3 formation, it was Šmicer himself who crossed for Drobnjak to break the deadlock, and the goalscorer soon pounced again to reverse the hierarchy at the summit.
Even so, the title hung in the balance on the final day. Two points separated Lens from Metz as they headed to meet an Auxerre team chasing a UEFA Cup berth. Provided Metz did not rack up a hatful against Lyon, Lens could snare the crown on goal difference with a draw. The only question now was how their confidence was bearing up after a 2-1 loss to Paris Saint-Germain in the French Cup final the previous weekend – and that question intensified when Sabri Lamouchi gave Auxerre an early lead, around the same time that Metz also went ahead.
